On view January 31st - March 9th
Artists: A. Martinez, Angela Lopez, Aubrey Ingmar, Bobbi Meier, Connie Noyes, Cydney M. Lewis, Jenny Halpern, Jihae Parl, Katie Kirk, Keeley Haftner, Noelle Garcia, Sarana Mehra, Tulika Ladsariya, Yemisi Oyeniyi
Let’s Be Real...
Motherhood is messy,
and cultural depictions fall flat from reality.
Motherhood is some sort of messy beauty.
Motherhood is not made visible enough.
No, we will not be hidden. We will show you who a warrior is. Let us show you the sublime.
We can demonstrate to you our super powers of juggling everything all at once while navigating the chaos of life. Do you want to understand the secrets of the universe? Ask a mother.
Let us give you a dose of reality, let’s get political, this is what motherhood looks like!
Let’s Be Real is a group exhibition featuring the work of 14 artists, all parents at various stages of motherhood or grandmotherhood. The artists include: A. Martinez, Angela Lopez, Aubrey Ingmar, Bobbi Meier, Connie Noyes, Cydney M. Lewis, Jenny Halpern, Jihae Park, Katie Kirk, Keeley Haftner, Noelle Garcia, Sarana Mehra, Tulika Ladsariya, and Yemisi Oyeniyi.
Drawing from diverse backgrounds, these artists offer a multifaceted, intimate exploration of the intersection between parenting and artistic practice, each providing a unique perspective. The exhibition showcases a wide range of media—fiber, ceramics, painting, video, and sound—while addressing powerful themes such as feminine myth, cultural memory, the body post-childbirth, rejecting domesticity, human connection, grief, humor, and self-discovery.
At its heart, Let's Be Real asks: How has parenthood shaped your artistic practice, and how has your art practice been shaped by your experience as a parent? In grappling with this question, the exhibition highlights the complexities of balancing family life with creative work. It creates a platform to explore the evolving relationship of motherhood by addressing a wide range of issues, from navigating the everyday mundaneness of parenting to the intricate processes of passing on values and culture. In its exploration of contemporary motherhood, often messy and never straightforward, Let's Be Real shows how creative practice and motherhood simultaneously challenge and nourish one another.
A.Martinez is an interdisciplinary visual artist, poet, and facilitator living in Chicago. Alyssa received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago's Writing Program. Alyssa’s work explores rituals, grief, ecology, and motherhood. Her social practice involves participatory community gatherings that prioritize collective and generative knowledge sharing and has facilitated events with the Museum of Contemporary Arts Chicago, Arts + Public Life, Threewalls, Comfort Station, and more. A.Martinez is a proud recipient of the 2019 3Arts Make a Wave Award, Chicago Artist Coalition's 2021 SPARK grant, and was a 2022 Threewalls In-Session Fellow. Alyssa is program director for WILD YAMS Black Mother Artist Residency and also a studio resident there. In addition to her creative work, Alyssa works as an arts administrator for music performance organizations. She enjoys spending time with her son exploring the world around them.
Angela Lopez is a visual artist whose paintings and sculptures explore themes of decay, healing, and growth, inspired by her experiences with chronic illness, loss, and motherhood. Her work grapples with the body’s fragility and strength, capturing moments of transformation. Lopez has exhibited nationally, including at 6018 North, Hyde Park Art Center, and Napoleon Gallery. She has received several honors, such as an IAP cultural grant and an artist residency at Wedge Projects in Chicago. Lopez co-founded Extended Practice, an artist-run initiative supporting artist-mothers, which inspired her pursuit of an M.A. in Counseling and Art Therapy at Adler University. A Chicago native, she holds a BFA from Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA from Northwestern University. Outside of her art and counseling work, Lopez enjoys coffee, biking, reading, and spending time in parks with her son.
Aubrey Ingmar (she/her) is an artist and activist based in Chicago, IL. Her work, exploring themes of motherhood, eco-feminism, and inequality through an anti-capitalist lens, combines satire, language, and visual storytelling. She integrates augmented reality, virtual sculpture, ceramics, and hand-built environments in her interdisciplinary practice. Ingmar's art has been featured in New American Paintings: Pacific Coast and exhibited at Art Los Angeles Contemporary, Frieze Art Fair, and in galleries across Berlin, Mexico City, New York, and California. Her work has been highlighted in Cool Hunting, Shoutout LA, Art & Cake, and Maake Magazine. As an activist, Aubrey has organized with Anti Capitalism for Artists, Artists for Democracy, Socialist Alternative, and founded the Let’s Be Real artist/mother collective.
Bobbi Meier is a Chicago-based visual artist. She creates provocative abstract sculptures, collages, and installations that explore humorous eroticism, hidden truths, and repressed sexuality. Her sculptures are included in the collections of the Kohler Foundation and the John Michael Kohler Art Center. She has completed residencies at the Kohler Arts/Industry Program, Ragdale Foundation, Ox-Bow School of Art. In 2023, Meier was an Artadia/Chicago finalist and received an Illinois Arts Council Grant. Her piece "Conversation Piece (reclining)" was a Manifest Gallery Grand Jury Prize Finalist. Currently, her work is featured in "A Tale of Today: Materialities" at the Driehaus Museum in Chicago. Meier’s art has been exhibited at venues such as The Hyde Park Center, Roots & Culture Contemporary Art Center, Evanston Art Center, International Museum of Surgical Science, and others. She holds an MA in Art Education and MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Connie Noyes, a multidisciplinary artist based in Chicago, explores themes of grief, cultural memory, and collective emotional growth, with water as a recurring motif. Her practice spans photography, installation, movement, video, and sound, with each project beginning through a meditative process that quiets external noise and focuses on the essential qualities of materials and sensations. In the context of climate collapse, Noyes reflects on grief's spiritual, emotional, and psychological complexities, creating intimate, minimalist visuals that highlight the transient, multi-layered nature of this present moment.
Cydney M. Lewis, is a Chicago-based multimedia artist with a multi-disciplinary and distinguished background. Her work delves into material manipulation, drawing her viewers into a realm of visual archaeology. Lewis intricately weaves the natural, spiritual, and scientific, observing nature's resilience and our potential for harmonious existence. Her art is held in private collections around the world, and has been exhibited widely, including Satellite Art Fair at Art Basel in Miami, Lubeznik Center for the Arts, National Museum in Berlin and the Hyde Park Art Center. Lewis' foundation lies in architecture, holding a degree from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign and studied at L'ecole D'architecture des Versailles, France. Recognitions encompass residencies at Chicago Public Schools, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Lyseloth Musikerwohnhaus in Basel, Switzerland.
Jenny Halpern is a painter and educator whose work explores liminal spaces where memory, domesticity, and the body become significant elements. These spaces dissolve the boundaries between reality and imagination, reflecting themes of holding, touch, and tangled moments that disrupt a linear sense of time. Based in Chicago, Jenny earned her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Painting and Drawing Department in 2023. Her work has been featured in Studio Visit Magazine Vol. 53 and exhibited at Rushwoman, Yes Project Space at Zhou B Art Center, NEIU Fine Arts Center Gallery, The Art Institute of Chicago, JULIUS CAESAR, Color Club, Hyde Park Art Center, Woman Made Gallery, CNL Projects, Terrain Exhibitions, Latin School, and Stasias Gallery.
Jihae Park is an artist based in Portland, Oregon, known for her evocative abstract paintings that capture the essence of her surroundings. Drawing inspiration from nature and landscapes, her work conveys the beauty and emotional depth of the environments she inhabits. Park has exhibited her artwork in various venues. Recently, her creative journey has taken a more personal turn, as she finds inspiration in heartfelt letters from her two children, Hana and Noah. Through her paintings, Park continues to explore themes of connection, place, and personal narrative, blending external and internal worlds into a vibrant visual language.
Katie Kirk is a painter and sculptor working in Los Angeles. Playing with ideas of transformation and impermanence, her work is inspired by the body and a celebration of materials.
Her ceramic sculptures often involve clay forms reminiscent of body parts like intestines, spines, or hands. She readily uses relief molds, body molds, and traced cutouts of her own figure throughout the work. Her paintings are made by layering, transfering, and conjoining acrylic paint skins made from large painted gestures brushed on plastic. As a whole, the work serves as an artifact of her body’s movements. She has exhibited in Los Angeles, Chicago, Columbus, and Houston and in various spaces across the US including the Torrance Art Museum, Irvine Fine Arts Center, LA City Mission College, and the Brand Library Art Center. She earned an MFA in Painting and drawing from the School of The Art Institute of Chicago in 2016.
Keeley Haftner (1985) is a Saskatchewanian-Canadian artist based in the Netherlands whose artwork centers around garbage – in other words, matter out of time and place. Using care as a medium, Haftner’s material-driven artworks use a wide range of technologies, disciplines, and time-based media that often result in dramatic transformations of waste – for example, 3D-printing disposable cups into leaves, or firing unwanted sculpture into bricks. Haftner received her BFA from Mount Allison University (2011) and her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2016). Her work has been exhibited internationally in the US, Canada, and Europe, including a solo exhibition at the Ceramic Museum of the Netherlands. Haftner was long-listed for Canada’s prestigious Sobey Art Award and short-listed for the Netherlands’ biennial De Kei Prize (2023). She is a recipient of the Canada Council for the Arts Research and Creation Grant (2018/21), and a current Professional Artist with Stroom (NL).
Noelle Garcia, based in the Chicago metropolitan area, is an artist who focuses on themes of identity, family history and recovered narratives in her work. She is an North American Indigenous artist from the Klamath, Modoc and Paiute tribes from Oregon and Nevada. Her multidisciplinary practice utilizes various research methods in order to inform her methodology. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Nevada Las Vegas. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and institutions across the United States. Garcia has earned awards and fellowships at various institutions such as the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, the American Indian Graduate Center, the Nevada Arts Council, and the Illinois Arts Council Agency. Noelle has held residencies at multiple organizations such as ACRE, Ox-Bow, Hyde Park Art Center, Ucross and the Center for Native Futures. Additionally, Noelle has published multiple articles and illustrations in publications such as the American Quarterly, Arts Everywhere Musagetes, and various comic books.
Sarana Mehra is a multidisciplinary artist whose work examines the relation between the body, body-politic and the cycle of disintegration and evolution in human-made systems like art, language and technology. Drawing on Eastern and Western mythologies and the artifacts of past civilizations gathering dust in our museums, Sarana uses her practice to examine a “future relic”. Each piece, like the remnants of our ancestors, leaves clues and symbols but ultimately obfuscates their contemporary use and ritual.
Sarana is a bi-racial artist living and working in Los Angeles. her BFA from the University of Oxford and her MFA from Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design (London). Sarana Mehra is a co-founder of Artists 4 Democracy, part of the Binder of Women art collective. She advocates for healthcare justice having been born with a rare illness. Sarana is bisexual and her pronouns are she/her.
Tulika Ladsariya is frequently drawn to objects associated with traditional women’s work using domesticity and nurture to discuss fragility, beauty, femininity, identity, and personal history. Her evolving practice spans painting, ceramics, and mixed media installations, focusing on domestic objects within the feminine sphere. Ladsariya uses handwork and gardening as symbols of the grounding rituals central to women’s lives and often collaborates with her mother and daughter, creating multigenerational connections in her work.
Born in Mumbai, India, and now based in Chicago, her art reflects her layered identity as an Indian-born woman, first-generation immigrant, and mother. She has exhibited at the Hammond Museum (NY), Ralph Arnold Gallery (Loyola University), O’Connor Gallery (Dominican University), Shingoethe Center (Aurora University), and Art Heritage Gallery (New Delhi), among others. Ladsariya was a resident at Hyde Park Art Center (2019-2021) and is a recipient of the BOLT residency (2022-23) with the Chicago Artists Coalition and the In-Session Fellowship with Threewalls Foundation (2022-23).
Yemisi Oyeniyi is an interdisciplinary social scientist, public art surveyor and storyteller. Her creative practice is rooted in her Nigerian, Afro-Caribbean and African American heritage and expresses itself through various mediums such as the culinary arts, writing, photography, painting and clay work. Yemisi has a deep love for language, especially oral storytelling and her recent foray into the visual arts is a vehicle to uncover a language and recover her stories. Her paintings speak directly to Yoruba mythology and storytelling as a means for connecting with her patrilineal lineages in Okuku and Inisa, and is informed by an intuitive process of decoding. Yemisi's artwork has been exhibited in group shows in Los Angeles (Keystone Gallery) and Ventura (643 Project Space) while her writing has been published in artists' catalogues (Angela Lorenz and Heather Lowe) and independent LA art publications (FullBlede and Art and Cake).
